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Monday, March 02, 2015

Beating the Bushes - Christine Matthews

Vincent Lloyd and Baylor Kracher have something in common
nobody would want: each of them has had a child disappear. In Lloyd's case, it
happened several years earlier when his six-year-old daughter was abducted,
raped, and murdered. The killer was never found, and a cloud of suspicion has
hovered over Lloyd ever since. With Kracher, it's his fifteen-year-old son who
vanishes without a trace. Haunted by his own tragedy, Lloyd volunteers to help
in the search for Stevie Kracher, and a friendship forms between the two men
that lasts for years, beyond the death of one of them, leading to a search that
won't end until the survivor finally uncovers the truth about Stevie's
disappearance.

BEATING THE BUSHES is an excellent suspense novel from Christine Matthews, dark
and twisty, written in a number of different but equally powerful voices. The
two protagonists are compelling characters with plenty of flaws and virtues,
and throughout their search, Matthews does a great job peeling back the layers
of the plot, which is a lot more complex than it might seem at first. BEATING
THE BUSHES is a grim book, no doubt about that, but it's also uplifting in its
own way and demonstrates the power of hope and persistence in even the worse
circumstances. If you like top-notch psychological thrillers, this one gets a
high recommendation from me.